On December 15, 1791, 212 years ago, the American Bill of Rights was ratified.
Thus ended a long and difficult process by which the American people first
liberated themselves from tyranny and then established the first government
in history founded on individual rights protected by a written constitution.
Now you, the Afghan people, liberated from the despotism of the Taliban,
must assume the daunting task of framing a constitution, instituting a new
government, and rebuilding civil society. The challenges that confront you
are formidable.

Modern history teaches that constitutions are easy to write. Over the course
of the last 200 years, almost every nation in the world, including communist
dictatorships and Islamic theocracies, has drafted a constitution. The sad
reality, however, is that few have brought freedom.

The particular difficulties that you face in establishing a new constitution
are enormous. If you are to have any chance at creating a prosperous, just
and free Afghan future, you must confront and overcome your own history.
This means two things. First, you must face directly the uncomfortable fact
that you have no useable tradition of self- government. Yours is a nation
long governed by traditions of fascist-like political rulers, medieval forms
of tribal and ethnic justice, and warring religions that are hostile to freedom.
Second, you must reject the political anarchy of your ethnic chieftains and
the religious tyranny of your Islamic mullahs. In a free Afghan society,
neither tribe nor mosque must be able to gain governmental power.

More important, you must discover and accept the moral preconditions of
a free society. Afghanistan's political, social, and economic reconstruction
will require an ideological reconstruction. Bad ideas destroyed your society
and only good ones can save it.

Once freed from the political grip of the twin evils of ethnic collectivism
and religious oppression, it is imperative that you import and accept the
ideas of the Western Enlightenment. Philosophers such as John Locke and America's
founding statesmen discovered the moral foundations and the political institutions
necessary to establish a free and just society. You must begin, as we did
in our revolution, by recognizing the moral sovereignty of the individual.
A free society recognizes that each and every man is capable of rational
self-government in the fullest sense. You must enshrine as inalienable the
rights of all men and women to their lives, liberty, and property.

Through our revolutionary experience, we learned that the protection of
man's individual rights is the only legitimate function of government. This
means that you must design a government limited to making and enforcing objective
laws of social conduct. This is no easy task.

According to James Madison, the father of our constitution, the great problem
in framing a government that is to be administered by men over men is this: "You
must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next
place, oblige it to control itself." The genius of America's founding
fathers was to have discovered a solution to this perennial problem--i.e.,
the idea of a written constitution as fundamental law. Men such as John Adams
and James Madison learned through experience that a written constitution
must stand above government as a higher law that creates, defines, and limits
the powers of government. Politically, your supreme law must be the constitution
and not the Koran or sharia law. Otherwise, your constitution will be little
more than a "parchment barrier" against the encroachments of power-lusting
mullahs.

In order to elevate the rule of law over the rule of men, America's founding
statesmen designed a constitutional system that curbed power in two important
ways. First, they limited the role of government to making and enforcing
laws that define crimes and punishments objectively, resolve civil disputes
between individuals, and enforce the sanctity of contracts. These functions
serve to protect the rights of the individual from the arbitrary power of
other men. Second, they built into our constitution several crucial principles,
procedures, and institutions that are necessary barriers to the concentration
and abuse of political power: e.g., separation of powers, checks and balances,
and federalism. These mechanisms serve to protect the rights of the individual
from the arbitrary use of government power.

In addition to these general principles of constitutional construction,
Afghanistan's founding fathers should add a double security to the freedom
of the Afghan people by explicitly identifying and protecting individual
rights in two crucial areas: freedom of thought and freedom of production
and trade. The Afghan state must be barred from interfering in the intellectual
and moral lives of its citizens, and it must not attempt to regulate wealth
creation or redistribute the fruits of a man's labor. In other words, there
must be a strict separation of mosque and state, as well as a strict separation
between the economy and the state.

In stark contrast to your Arab and Persian neighbors, you have a unique
opportunity to liberate yourself from the darkness of your past. The United
States of America has freed you from the tyranny of a brutal and wicked regime,
but its greatest and most enduring gift is contained in two old and musty
documents written more than two hundred years ago- -the Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution. It is here that you will find the true meaning of freedom.